Welcome to our June newsletter.
Anyone want to know how to get flexible? Here’s how… Do what my instructor, Master Lu Jun Hai, did… When he was six his father put him in the splits up against a tree, tied him there and left him for half an hour.… not just once but many times, in fact when he got older master Lu would tie himself to a tree in the splits and read the newspaper, and it is said that he didn’t miss a training session for 40 years, training 3-4 hours a day, 7 days a week, oh and this training was outdoors so it was in all weathers too. Now jump 70 years to when he was in his early to mid seventies. He could still hold his foot against his head and drop into the splits.
When seeing him do this you would be forgiven for thinking that he is just talented and that normal people can’t do that.
You’d be wrong. Now it’s not that talent doesn’t exist but if it’s missing some vital ingredients it becomes useless. You see there is what we call the talent myth, the idea that you only need talent to succeed. Talent does help and it will make it slightly easier for the people who are, but if they are missing, determination, consistency and persistence… a less talented person that has these skills will outshine them.
When we hear someone say “I can’t do it”, we need to reframe it to “I’m not able to do it yet”. You see if we just see Master Lu as talented (which he obviously was) we ignore all of the pain and hard work he put in to become a master.
On a side note I’ve trained under 2 masters in my life and seen hundreds more…. Only a few I have seen were really masters. For me a master is someone that is both talented, but has also put in the thousands of hours and many decades of obsessive work, so that their skill is as natural to them as breathing.
My own story although not as dramatic consists of me (at around 10 years old) standing on a 2 foot high brick wall, throwing a tennis ball between the 3 foot gap between 2 second story windows. I would have a competition between my left and right hand, as if it was a tennis match, making sure to bounce the ball off the wall so that I had to stretch to catch it in the opposite hand. I would do this for hours, outside the front of the house throwing the ball…. It was obviously simpler times :D.
It helped that we also played a similar game at school, but over some years, and heading into my late teens I was so good at catching a ball I could often do it without looking, when playing games that required you to catch a ball it was as if the ball would just fly to my hand…. A pretty useless skill but a skill gained through determination (the competition between my left and right hand was serious), consistency (I was out there for hours, usually everyday during the summer) and persistence (I did this for years).
The point is skills are gained through consistent repetition until they become a part of who you are. You will build neural pathways so broad that the information you need to perform the skill is instantaneous, which in turn leaves your brain and body more time to figure out any unseen problems… a genius is usually someone that has done something for such a long time that it seems like magic… it isn’t,… it’s consistency and persistence.
The great thing is consistency and persistence build momentum, which means that the skill you are learning becomes easier to learn the more consistent and persistent you are. This is why in the martial arts the first 100 days are the hardest, this is where you’re starting to build the neural pathways to form the new skill. Unfortunately this is where most people give in because it’s hard.
So if you want a new skill give it 100 days of persistent, determined, daily training.
Oh and for those that like football, get a border collie (very clever and energetic dogs) and try to get around them with the football… if you can do a Cruyff on a border collie you can do it on anyone.
